COBOL (COmmon Business-Oriented Language) is one of the oldest programming languages. The name is indicative of its primary domain, namely business, finance, and administrative systems for companies and governments. COBOL has an English-like syntax and structural elements including nouns, verbs, clauses, sentences, sections, and divisions. COBOL syntax is relatively verbose so that non-programmers, such as managers, supervisors, and users, can read and understand the code. However, the verbose nature of COBOL leads to time consuming navigation of numerous lines of code during program analysis.
During the analysis of a COBOL program, a user may be required to navigate the code by following branches and accessing external databases, only to return to the part of the code where the investigation began and navigate another path, or branch, of interest. The user generally navigates though various portions of the code including: (i) paragraph definitions; (ii) variable declaration statements; and (iii) SQL (structured query language) cursor declaration statements. The user will further view other source code including: (i) copybook source code; and (ii) declarations generator source code. Oftentimes, the user would like to enter a branch of the source code, view all possible sub-branches, for example, by means of a code editor's “find function” or other macros. When the branch and sub-branches are extensive or complex, the trail is difficult to track and trace using this approach.